


a little place called zihuatanejo

by mollivanders



Category: Psych
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they get back from Canada, Gus spots Juliet on the pier one day, still defrosting and sharing a pile of onion rings with a friend he doesn’t know. She looks different in jeans and a t-shirt (absurdly pretty, but he brushes it aside).</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little place called zihuatanejo

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: a little place called zihuatanejo**  
>  Rating: PG  
> Characters: Juliet/Gus  
> Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all of _Psych_ Season 4.  
>  Summary: They've been going on longer than even they'd admit (or anybody has to know).  
> Disclaimer: Psych belongs to _USA_ , I own nothing.

When they get back from Canada, Gus spots Juliet on the pier one day, still defrosting and sharing a pile of onion rings with a friend he doesn’t know. She looks different in jeans and a t-shirt (absurdly pretty, but he brushes it aside).

She doesn’t see him and he never brings it up, but he knows he’ll spend forever trying to spot that girl in the detective again.

 

The first time Shawn brings Abigail to an investigation, Gus can’t find the girl on the pier for the life of him. Locked away, missing, kidnapped (he’d like to think). After Shawn’s been whisked away, Gus acts on a whim and asks Juliet if she wants to get some jerk chicken.

 _Sure_ , she says, grinning for the first time that day, and it warms him inside (curls around his lungs and squeezes them tight like betrayal).

She doesn’t eat much though, the way she’s talking wildly, always with her hands. While it’s hard to get a word in edgewise Gus lets her talk. She’s only saying what he’s been thinking.

 

It becomes their private thing, after a while. He and Shawn finish a case, Shawn leaves for Abigail, and Gus swings by Juliet’s apartment. In the summer they walk everywhere, careless, unseeing, and the lines that furrow her face during the day disappear (for a while). Part of him wonders if it’d be better (wiser) for him and Shawn to move on, but the selfish part of him says to hold on, just a little longer.

The first rainstorm catches them by surprise, a sudden California squall from up the coast, and they squeeze under an awning for shelter. 

Trapped against each other, he kisses her first (he’d be lying if he said he regretted it). She’s frozen against him, palms slick against his shirt, before she kisses him back (without warning).

It stops raining before they do, but this time, there’s no one out to see.

 

She meets him at his apartment after that, cutting back on the risk in her life. At first they play card games and watch television before they dispense with pretext. Once, they cook a dinner that sits untouched and he eats it as leftovers for the rest of the week.

Gus still thinks she might just be biding her time.

And then it doesn’t seem like it’ll matter anymore because Shawn gets kidnapped (for real, this time) and she barely looks at Gus even though she knows he’s just as scared as she is. He watches her take Shawn’s call and the whites of her knuckles and the sinking slope of her shoulders tell him all he needs to know (what the walk through Shawn’s place hadn’t already told him).

She doesn’t come by his place again (he tries not to take it personally).

 

But when her brother shows up and he doesn’t even know Gus’ _name_ but he knows Shawn’s life story, he can’t help but take some offense. He knows it’s wrong, knows she’s vulnerable right now, knows she just lost her big brother but he waits for her at the station anyway. Juliet spots him immediately but stalls until Lassiter’s occupied to walk over.

 _If you’re here for your check, the chief’ll cut it for you in the morning,_ she recites, like she doesn’t know why he’s really here. Flinches when he reaches for her wrist to pull her closer into the shadows with him (but Gus doesn’t even know what he wants).

So he drops his forehead against hers and mutters _I’m sorry_ against her ear. _This won’t last,_ she tells him, turning her wrist out of his hand to cradle his neck.

 _Can we go somewhere?_ he asks, trying to ignore everything else in the moment (the pounding in his ears, the warmth from her breath).

They go to the pier and watch the waves crash uselessly in the night, but they stop for smoothies on the way home and she laughs (it didn’t take that long).

 

Gus takes her on an actual date the next week and she tries, she does, but he sees how she scans the street for someone whose not there and uses him as a shield while they walk. _I wish it would rain,_ she says, full of irony today. _You know that’s right,_ he jokes back and takes her hand (tries to slip into a role that doesn’t quite fit anymore).

Truth be told, he’s looking over his shoulder too because he knows he’s there. Somehow, Shawn has to know.

A week later, a fake decoy secret girlfriend puts him off their scent and they leave Santa Barbara at the same time. She drives them half a day away to the Santa Monica pier where they ride the Ferris wheel and buy churros that taste better than they do in Santa Barbara. The waves aren’t as big here, and Gus likes them better (likes how she looks like she did, all those months ago on another pier).

He never calls her Jules.

 

She’ll always do something to throw him off, he realizes. Old boyfriends from seven years ago, nearly dying from a deadly virus that should have found him instead, leaving him unexpectedly when Lassiter calls in about a case. The more time they spend pretending, the more he likes pretending this is the way it should work and always will work.

And part of him is foolish enough to hope that Shawn realizes he missed his chance and will just let it go when he (inevitably) finds out. They’re not hiding as much anymore - Gus’ hand brushes against Juliet’s in public; she swipes his drinks during brainstorming sessions.

For a guy who prides himself on being psychic, Shawn’s either in denial or not that good.

One night they tempt fate and pull in two cars behind Shawn at the drive-in movie theatre. He’s sitting by himself and the moment’s too perfect – Juliet pulls Gus into the back seat of the car as the movie plays on (tells the story of a man who takes the blame for something he didn’t do while the guy sitting next to him just doesn’t understand).

 

And then he’s sent like an errand boy to save the girl he can’t let himself really love, because his friend is too busy with another girl to catch up already. He’s not strong enough to save her on his own and that’s when he realizes pretending will never be enough. Not here.

So when she disappears, Gus waits a day, then two days. On the third, he gets a postcard and hits the road with a (borrowed) company car.

All she wrote was, _Tell you where I'd go. Zihuatanejo._

_Finis_


End file.
